We have said that the earliest Norman castle was a motte fortified by a stockade, an earthwork protected with timber palings.  That is the latest theory amongst antiquaries, but there are not a few who maintain that the Normans, who proved themselves such admirable builders of the stoutest of stone churches, would not long content themselves with such poor fortresses.  There were stone castles before the Normans, besides the old Roman walls at Pevensey, Colchester, London, and Lincoln.  And there came from Normandy a monk named Gundulf in 1070 who was a mighty builder.  He was consecrated Bishop of Rochester and began to build his cathedral with wondrous architectural skill.  He is credited with devising a new style of military architecture, and found much favour with the Conqueror, who at the time especially needed strong walls to guard himself and his hungry followers.  He was ordered by the King to build the first beginnings of the Tower of London.  He probably designed the keep at Colchester and the castle of his cathedral town, and set the fashion of building these great ramparts of stone which were so serviceable in the subjugation and overawing of the English.  The fashion grew, much to the displeasure of the conquered, who deemed them “homes of wrong and badges of bondage,” hateful places filled with devils and evil men who robbed and spoiled them.  And when they were ordered to set to work on castle-building their impotent wrath knew no bounds.  It is difficult to ascertain how many were constructed during the Conqueror’s reign.  Domesday tells of forty-nine.  Another authority, Mr. Pearson, mentions ninety-nine, and Mrs. Armitage after a careful examination of documents contends for eighty-six.  But there may have been many others.  In Stephen’s reign castles spread like an evil sore over the land.  His traitorous subjects broke their allegiance to their king and preyed upon the country.  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that “every rich man built his castles and defended them against him, and they filled the land full of castles.  They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at these castles, and when the castles were finished they filled them with devils and evil men.  Then they took those whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented as these were.  They hung some up by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke; some by their thumbs or by the head, and they hung burning things on their feet.  They put a knotted string about their heads, and twisted it till it went into the brain.  They put them into dungeons wherein were adders and snakes and toads, and thus wore them out.  Some they put into a crucet-house, that is, into a chest that was short and narrow and not deep, and they put sharp stones in it, and crushed the man therein so that they broke all his limbs.  There